Saratoga Springs residents will have a chance this November to make City Hall more efficient, accountable and possibly less expensive – by voting “yes” to change the form of government.

The city is in good shape. Property taxes are reasonable. Snow is plowed and leaves are picked up. We’re well-protected by firefighters and police. Commercial and residential growth continues.

Why mess with success?

Well, the old saw “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” doesn’t apply. City Hall isn’t broken, but it would surely be better with a manager overseeing the whole kit and caboodle instead of the current five-headed monster.

Talk to movers and shakers in Saratoga Springs, and they’ll admit good things happen despite city government, not because of it. If you’ve needed help or information from City Hall, as I have, you’re likely to have had to visit multiple offices in different departments to resolve a single issue. Capable, hard-working city employees privately share their frustrations with the setup.

A Charter Review Commission of 15 citizens has concluded more than 13 months of extensive research, interviews and public discussions by voting, 11-2 (with two members absent), to present its on the Nov. 7 general election ballot. Even the nay-sayers lauded the work of their conscientious colleagues.

The new proposal isn’t perfect, but it’s less imperfect than the system it would replace.

This will be one in a series of occasional pieces in which I plan to address different facets of the charter proposition as the vote nears. I welcome your questions, suggestions and anecdotes. I’ll start with why the system should be changed.

Here are three overriding reasons the current commission government is weak, based primarily on my 38 years covering Saratoga Springs government and politics for The Saratogian as well as my experiences as a city resident:

No one is in charge – not even the mayor, who has no real power to compel action.

All five city council members, including the mayor, wear two hats: Each is elected as a legislator and an administrator, responsible for specific segments of City Hall, such as public safety, public works, assessments or finance – regardless of their interest or knowledge in those areas. Council members tend to focus on issues within their areas of accountability (and become their advocates), instead of taking a broader view as leaders of city government.

City Hall is thus set up like five silos, each headed by one of the five City Council members, including the mayor. This results in some duplicated tasks and a cumbersome (or nonexistent) process for sharing information. Sometimes City Council members play nice together and work cooperatively; sometimes they stymie one another, to the public’s detriment. And since some departments with related functions (such as the building department and code enforcement) fall under different council members’ purviews, citizens must run from one office to another resolve an issue.

If you have a concern with street paving, it shouldn’t be addressed only to the City Council member elected as commissioner of public works. Likewise, a question about police patrols shouldn’t be directed only at the commissioner of public safety. Every council member should be responsive to the public’s concerns and have a stake in how all city matters are handled, not just those under their administrative purview. And they should be able to turn to a city manager to be sure day-to-day tasks are getting done.

That’s what the proposed system would do.

The plan is to create a seven-member City Council, including a mayor, with staggered, limited terms. The biggest change: Instead of each hiring their own full-time deputy and/or director to run their respective departments, as is now the case, the council would hire a professional manager to oversee the running of all aspects of City Hall.

The proposed form would allow for the reorganization of city operations based on the best process, not politics. The proposal makes a commitment to not laying off people but to reducing positions through attrition, and doesn’t attempt to guess at what the ultimate staff number ought to be. It’s time to let the City Council be policy makers, and let the people who work in City Hall do their jobs.

It would have been a workday, that Monday morning. I sat up and swung my legs off the side of the bed. Liquid gushed onto the floor.

“Jim!” I shouted. “My water broke!”

I guess we’re doing this, I thought. It was about 7 a.m., a civilized time to wash up, head to Saratoga Hospital and give birth.

Dave and me, Barb, many moons ago.

Twenty-one (alternately boring and unbelievably painful) hours later, around a most uncivilized 4 a.m. on Tuesday, June 9, 1987,

Dave & Jim at the Hedges in Blue Mountain Lake, where we’ll be in July with Dave, Bethany, Joe and Summer, a family vacation instigated by Dave.

Jim and I experienced the most joyful, amazing moment of our lives: David Michael Lombardo was born.

Holy smokes, we created a life. We made a baby. We’re parents. We have a son!

As David was growing up, he was often the focus (along with younger brother Joe) of a lighthearted family-oriented column I wrote every week for years while managing editor of The Saratogian. I stopped writing personal stuff as the boys matured into young men.

But today I want to publicly wish him a Happy 30th Birthday.

After all, David was the one who named and created my DoneWithDeadlines.com website and Facebook page to encourage me to keep writing after I left the newspaper almost two years ago. David is the one who tells me, over and over again, how to copy the column from one medium to another, and reminds me to tweet a link. Perhaps this column will compensate for belatedly beseeching Tony Kornheiser to give Dave a birthday shoutout; I discovered to my dismay that he won’t have a podcast on June 9. 🙁

David knows what he likes, but he doesn’t ask for much. Anything Tony Kornheiser. A sub from Aunt Cookies when we’re near his alma mater, Geneseo. A printout of an American Test Kitchen recipe every now and again, and one of their recommended cooling racks or baking pans. Cookies and ice cream. Fine dining. Family get-togethers.

David inherited his father’s (and grandfathers’) interest in government, political news and sports, and his mother’s (and maternal grandfather’s) low-brow humor. He is smart, quick-witted, and innovative (check out his poozer politics podcast). He goes all in when he sets his mind on something at work, home or on the field. His smile is contagious.

Most important, though, are his character and spirit. He was a good kid who grew into a good, kind, loving man. My husband and I couldn’t be prouder.

I became addicted to Anna Quindlen decades ago. She was my main reason for subscribing to Newsweek and, later, what I looked forward to most in The New York Times. As a fledgling journalist, wife and mother, I admired her crisp, pointed, touching, information-packed columns and commentary. And, unlike childhood idol Brenda Starr, she was a real person. With a family. And a Pulitzer Prize.

So I jumped at the chance when our wonderful local, independent Northshire Bookstore announced that Quindlen would be coming June 7 to Saratoga Springs. Good thing I did; they sold out Skidmore College’s Palamountain Hall.

In a very sweet introduction, Rachel Person, Northshire’s event manager, talked about how her mother would share Quindlen’s columns with the directive: “You MUST read this!” Rachel seemed as excited to be in the same room as Anna Quindlen as I was.

The format was a conversation between Quindlen and Isaac Pulver, director of the Saratoga Springs Public Library. His thoughtful observations and questions elicited frank responses about a variety of subjects, many of them tied to her latest novel, “Miller’s Valley,” which just came out in paperback.

Asked about the research she does for her novels, Quindlen surprised me by saying she doesn’t do any. For her characters, she draws on her experience and basic understanding about how people behave. Everything else, she makes up. That’s OK, she assured us. We’re talking novels, not news stories.

The author’s bio in the back of “Miller’s Valley” begins “Anna Quindlen is a novelist and journalist” — and at Skidmore she said if she had to describe what she was, she’d say “reporter.” I loved that because, despite leaving the newspaper business almost two years ago, I will always think of myself as a journalist. And, like Quindlen, I cherish, defend and applaud the excellent work of reporters who protect democracy by keeping the public informed.

I was thrilled when Quindlen described how she reads her words aloud and rewrites until every sentence rings true to her ear. I’ve (almost) always done the same thing, striving for a conversational tone. Next semester I’ll tell my journalism students, “Hey, don’t take my word. Anna Quindlen does it, too.”

Quindlen brushed off an audience member’s entreaty that she return to journalism, saying Baby Boomers don’t know when it’s time to make way. How do you know it’s time? She offered this clue: While making money at college as a “Barnard Babysitter,” one of her charges was Maggie Haberman.

Lisa Niles would have loved this morning. Her very good friend, Lu Lucas, received the Leadership Saratoga program’s highest award, which is named in her memory.

I am happy and sad at the same time. So is Lu.

Lu was nominated for the Lisa Niles Distinguished Leadership Award honor by her longtime colleague Rich Ferguson, who at this morning’s Leadership Saratoga breakfast ran through an exhausting list of Lu’s current volunteerism. She is actively involved in so much, on top of a full-time job and personal responsibilities. And, as Rich noted, she does it without fanfare, never wishing to draw attention to herself.

Lisa was the same way.

I became friends with Lisa as colleagues in Leadership Saratoga’s initial Class of 1986 and as sisters in the fledgling Soroptimist International of Saratoga County, along with Lu and Lisa Schroeder Bevis, one of the founders of the thriving service organization. For years the four of us would get together for monthly dinners.

Lisa passed away on July 7, 2001 at the age of 45, way too young. She was the first president of the Leadership Alumni Association, hence the award in her memory.

A packed room of Leadership Saratoga alums from 1986-2017 at June 7 program. Members of the latest class described their recent public service projects.

As the latest recipient of the Lisa Niles Distinguished Leadership Award, Lu is in good company with other alums of the program who continue to volunteer for the betterment of the community. That would have been honor enough. But the award means even more for Lu, who shared in her brief remarks how Lisa was a personal friend, mentor and role model. I couldn’t have been prouder this morning as Lu was recognized for her community service in the name of a friend whose spirit clearly lives on.

The president can communicate via a statement printed on White House letterhead, a gathering of his supporters, a televised speech, a recorded interview, a spokesman’s announcement, a call to talk radio, an email to whomever, an airplane banner. Or Twitter.

The medium matters, but not as much as the fact that it’s the president speaking. Every pronouncement by the president must be treated as such – no matter the medium.

White House aide Kellyanne Conway wants the world to dismiss Trump’s tweets. Of course she does. She derided the press for its “obsession with covering everything he says on Twitter and very little of what of he does as president.”

Talking to the world via tweets is what Trump does as president. How he communicates and what he says both speak volumes about how his mind works and what he believes – and it’s the role of the press to report presidential pronouncements and hold him accountable for them.

The New York Times’s Maggie Haberman hit the nail on the head (via Twitter): “Calling them ‘tweets’ minimizes them. They’re statements from the president made on Twitter.”

I didn’t recognize this at first. All traditional press releases are not equally newsworthy. At the very start of Trump’s presidency, I thought the all-day news channels were obsessed with every tweet, endlessly and fruitlessly speculating on what he meant by the ridiculous statement of the moment.

But it took less than a month for Trump to declare via Twitter that the media is the enemy of the American people. That was nothing less than an official declaration, a directive of sorts, from the president of the United States. It scared the heck out of me. I woke up.

“Trump’s tweets are no less authoritative than Trump’s comments in a press availability or a speech,” Ed Kilgore wrote in a “New York” magazine article aptly titled, “Donald Trump’s Tweets Are Providing the Real Story of His Presidency.” He’s right. The tweets should be taken as seriously as presidential comments made through more traditional mediums — more so, in fact.

Don’t dismiss Trump tweets as crazy, casual rants. They are nothing less than official statements to the world from the president of the United States. Even when they are crazy. Especially when they are.

These 140-character outbursts reflect Trump’s unfiltered self. They reveal more than staff-written teleprompts and carry the weight of the president’s word, because that’s what they are.

My father-in-law received a letter the other day from the Address Correction Unit of his health plan noting that the U.S. Post Office has indicated a change of address and asking for updated address information “at your earliest convenience.”

His new address since November: Heaven. Cloud Nine, I hope.

So I called the number on the letter and eventually reached a useless series of recordings. After trying various voice mail options, repeating a bad word and pressing 0 multiple times, really hard, I was connected to a real person. Sorry for your loss, said the real person, but you need to call the Address Correction Unit. She gave me another phone number.

That number eventually connected me to a friendly recording instructing the enrollee to note a change of address by completing Form TF850 or writing a letter that must be signed and dated by the enrollee.

That’s not gonna happen.

Instead, I will vent here and then drop a line to the New York State Department of Civil Service Employee Benefits Division, to let them know what’s up and, I hope, prevent further waste of our tax dollars. My father and father-in-law, now sharing the same address, would be rolling their eyes. Maybe they are.

IMG_4237 I thought fooling around on the piano would make me miss my son Joe, who lives in Chicago and for whom the mahogany Baldwin upright was purchased. Instead, poking at “Heart and Soul” made me blue for my mother, who loved her baby grand.

And so, though I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, I am going to post it today – on her birthday.

My father, a Brownsville boy, often talked about the first time he went to my then 18-year-old mother’s apartment in Bensonhurst, in the same borough but a world apart. “They had a baby grand in the living room,” he said. “I figured the Blassmans were rich.”

Not long after, when we visited Nana and Grandpa I’d bang away at “Chopsticks,” yelling “Can you hear me? Are you listening?” to my grandparents and parents as they no doubt rolled their eyes (and held their ears) in the kitchen. This could explain why Nana kept a bottle of aspirin near the sink.

Years later, my parents moved us to our first house and the baby grand took the trek from Brooklyn to Voorheesville, perfectly filling a corner of our new company-only living room. At age 17 I took lessons, despite being unable to read music, keep to the music, or get the fingers on my left hand to move independently from those on my right.

By the end of my first and only year as a piano student, the teacher had kindly taught me “Spinning Song” and a junior version of “Moonlight Sonata” so I could hold my head high (and fingers slightly curled) as the oldest performer at the recital in her old-fashioned living room.

“Henry plays better,” my father chuckled from that day on, accurately assessing one of the grade-schoolers, a boy for whom I babysat. Mom giggled and agreed. “Hey, twenty-seven fifty,” he’d call me when we had visitors, referring to the amount he’d invested in my lessons, “play something.”

Truth be told, I’m light on memories of my mother playing the piano, short of sitting beside her as I muddled through one hand of “Heart and Soul” while she played the fancy parts and sang in her lovely soprano. What I remember clearly and painfully is the regret with which my mother gave up her beloved piano when my parents downsized to an apartment.

I rarely touch our piano, but for some reason it beckoned this afternoon. When my fingers failed to reprise my recital hits, I fell back on a semi-dexterous two-handed “Heart and Soul,” making me miss mom – even though she, too, would have said, “Henry plays better.”

6:45 p.m. Joe knocks and Jim opens the door as I nonchalantly peruse The New Yorker in our room at the new Hyatt Place in Hyde Park, a lovely enclave about eight miles south of downtown and home of the University of Chicago, where he is earning a Ph.D. in computational neuroscience. Hugs!!!!

7:30 p.m. Show up 15 minutes early for dinner at A10 Hyde Park Eatery and Bar, which is about 10 steps from our hotel. There is no room at the bar so we take a walk around the block. Joe points out his locked-up bike that he rode over from his apartment and I play it cool by refraining (until the next day) from commenting on the absence of a helmet.

7:45 p.m. Return to A10 where the hostess profusely apologizes because our table is not ready, perhaps suspecting that at least one of the older members of our party is on Eastern Standard Time and should be in her jammies. The wait was no big deal, really (stifle yawn). Of our three dinners, I hit the jackpot with a bone-in pork chop, polenta and grilled knob onion and a seat facing Joe (and Jim).

Saturday
9 a.m. Joe joins us and we head around the corner to the cafeteria-style, cash-only Valois Restaurant, where I am tempted to order a favorite breakfast of former Hyde Park resident Barack Obama but opt instead for one of mine, a veggie omelet with home fries and coffee.

11 a.m. Catch the breezy and informative one-hour tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic, contemporary Robie House, built more than 100 years ago and now a U.S. National Historic Landmark. Like much of Chicago built after the terrible 1871 fire, the exterior of the Robie House is brick — but the similarity to other structures of its time (and now) ends there.

Reading up on artwork “parked” in a U of Chicago garage: A Cadillac encased in concrete.

1 p.m. Stroll the campus of University of Chicago, where people seem pretty happy despite the undergraduate slogan of this being the place “where fun comes to die.” See the Cadillac encased in concrete. Swing through the free Smart Museum of Art. Then cross the courtyard to catch a matinee of the Chicago premiere of Tom Stoppard’s thought-provoking play “The Hard Problem” at the Court Theatre. Aside from a handful of students discussing “duality” as they left the packed theater, the audience overwhelmingly qualified for senior discounts, and I don’t mean college senior.

La Bombe at La Petit Folie, served rightside up but posted sideways after several failed attempts to rotate.

10 a.m. Joe leads us on a walk around the neighborhood, dotted with parks and playgrounds and noticeably more dense with shops, restaurants and apartments since he moved there in the fall of 2012. New U of Chicago dorms and Hyde Park apartments replicate the unique wavy look of the architects’ Aqua Tower (which we’d admired on riverboat architectural tours during past visits to Chicago).

11:30 a.m. A cab awaits our return to Midway. One more hug. Make that two, to tide me over until next time. A mother can play it just so cool.

This really could be the year to introduce a more efficient way to run Saratoga Springs City Hall.

Could be.

I’ve got homework (a printout of the 24-page draft), immediate concerns and thinking to do. But my gut takeaway from the March 29 standing-room-only public forum about changing the city’s forum of government is that the proposal crafted – and still being tweaked — by the current charter revision commission could be the one.

Here are my four main questions:

Why change the existing form in a 102-year-old city that seems to be quite healthy?

What’s it going to do to my property taxes?

Who will I call if my street needs plowing?

What affect will it have on who runs the City Council and City Hall?

First: Why change? Things get done in Saratoga Springs despite the form or government, not because of it. The existing commission form requires each of the five City Council members, including the mayor, to not simply be legislators but to also wear administrative hats with oversight of specific segments of city operations. No one, including the mayor, can force their colleagues to do something, and no one, not even the mayor, is truly in charge.

Second: What will it cost? Well, the charter review commission chairman is confident a switch to an elected seven-member council with an appointed city manager will cost significantly less than the current form. Opportunities exist to reduce spending by eliminating some redundant positions. But I’m skeptical. I’ve never seen government spend less, not really, have you? Cost estimates have yet to be seen.

Three: Who ya gonna call? Earlier this year, when I thought I needed the public safety department for assistance, I was politely told to call the public works department instead. And most citizens instinctively call the mayor’s office for things that are not in the mayor’s purview. Under the proposed form, citizens with a question or complaint could directly call the City Manager’s office. Or they could bug any of the City Council members — just like now, except that the council members could then go directly to the city manager, who would be in charge of all of the city’s operations. I’m still not clear, however, about the chain of command; the City Manager cannot have seven masters. That wouldn’t be any better than the present five-headed monster.

Four: Who’s in charge? It seems logical that City Council positions that are strictly legislative could attract more people to run for office. And it seems logical to have one appointed city manager responsible for all city operations. I’m not convinced, however, that a full-time mayor, as proposed in the draft, is warranted in a system with a full-time, professional city manager. The mayor’s duties may justify greater part-time compensation than the other council members, but that still sounds like a part-time job.

That’s it for the moment. Armed with a yellow highlighter and red pen, I’m going to read through the commission’s proposed charter, and I’ll get back to you. Meanwhile, you can do some of your own homework at saratogacharter.com. And I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts as well.

My husband and his three siblings (assisted by a few hard-working others) gathered this past weekend in the home they all grew up in, putting the past behind them and remembering events and people that will forever connect them.

Sisters-in-law Mary Jane and Rhonda go through a few of the hundreds of photos and mementos saved by their parents.

The goal was to make serious headway in cleaning out the house that their 89-year-old father, a widower for more than a quarter-century, lived in almost until his death last year. Task one was to load a walk-in dumpster to the gills with decades’ worth of stuff stored in the basement, garage and shed. Task two was to sort through and split up albums and boxes of photos and clippings and related evidence that the lives of Ron and Florence Lombardo were chock-full of family and love.

I’d gone through this ceremony of sorts a year earlier with my brother and sister when our father made us eligible, as he liked to say, to attend the orphans’ picnic. So it’s been a bit painful to relive saying goodbye, this time to a man who’d been a second father to me for almost 40 years. But it was heartening to hear Jim and his sisters and brother re-tell family lore (alternately sweet and sad, and sometimes funny) sparked by picking up a photo – some from their own milestones and some from before any of them were born.

I’m a little blue that we’re running out of reasons to visit Mt. Morris, this “Best Town by a Dam Site” on the northern end of lovely Letchworth State Park, in a village where the waitress at Charred knows on sight to bring my husband a Stella and put in an order for pulled pork with onion rings, where the manager at the Country Inn and Suites can always find us a room, where

in July 1973 after freshman year at SUNY Binghamton I stepped through the breezeway and into the blue-cupboard kitchen to visit a college pal and meet the couple who five years later would be my in-laws.

For a while it felt like cleaning out my husband’s childhood home would take forever.